'Expensive research infra to be made available in smaller cities'

New Delhi: Researchers from smaller cities will soon be able to access expensive research infrastructure at state-funded institutions as the Centre has released guidelines for sharing such scientific equipment at a small cost.

While researchers from mofussil towns will get access to cutting-edge equipment, the Scientific Research Infrastructure Sharing Maintenance and Networks (SRIMAN) guidelines also seek to incentivise the institutions by rating them for the extent of participation in the initiative, which may have a bearing on the funds they receive in the future.

Releasing the guidelines recently, Science and Technology Minister Jitendra Singh noted that 90 per cent of the high-end research equipment is imported and not shared among the research community.

The objective of the SRIMAN initiative is to "make publicly-funded scientific research infrastructure available as valuable public resource by providing better access and sharing for extensive and optimal use of the community".

The initiative also seeks to improve efficiency of public expenditure by sharing expensive and state-of-the-art publicly-funded research infrastructure.

"Scientific infrastructure is the foundation of research and innovation and facilitating its availability, accessibility and sharing needs to become a key goal, particularly for countries like India with limited resources," Singh said.

The initiative also seeks to promote the domestic instrumentation industry by encouraging universities and research-and-development institutions to set up start-ups to manufacture research instruments and also develop the workforce for its maintenance.

The guidelines make it clear that the discretionary authority to define exclusive and shareable infrastructure, along with providing exceptions, will remain with the Department of Science and Technology (DST), except in the case of strategic departments, which will be the discretionary authorities for their own infrastructure.

The guidelines make it clear that individual researchers availing the facility under the initiative will enjoy complete rights on intellectual property.

"Just by providing access and sharing research infrastructure, a grantee agency cannot claim IPR on the work done by individual researchers," the guidelines said.